You’re still dry-heaving when suddenly an arm like a tree limb slips around
your waist from behind and squeezes. You’re torn between the slew of
appropriate responses to being mauled on a city sidewalk and the biological
need to...

*Blaaagggghhp.*

That settles that. The remaining contents of your stomach, and bile you
haven’t even produced yet, spill out in a final rush. That accomplished,
you squirm around to see who the hell just grabbed you. You resist the
impulse to fight like a... well, a fox in a trap. Until you know what
you’ve been grabbed by (so far, all you can see is an extremely hairy arm),
there’s no sense in clawing for the eyes. First, you need to be albe to
SEE the eyes. Besides, you’re pretty sure you can’t break this grip.

You manage to turn to face your... attacker? He’s no one you recognize,
but then, you don’t actually think you’ve ever MET a satyr before.

"Hey, what--? Put me down!" you shout.

If a guy like this -- he must be about seven feet tall -- can sneak up
behind you, you were obviously pretty distracted. Having your head in a
garbage can will do that, though.

I whip around, ignoring the twist of nausea in my gut. A satyr.
Oh, god. Embodiment of desire meets embodiment of lust. Last thing I
needed.

I hold up a hand for him to wait, then spit into the trashcan and
wipe my mouth with a crumpled kleenex. When I'm feeling a touch more
human--and hopefully when I have a hook in his mind--I twist around
carefully, look him in the eye, and say, "Down, please."

I'm still too ill to feel real rage, but I'm angry. No one smiles
at my suffering.

If he drops me right away without saying anything, or with a
standard apology, I give him a hard look and vanish into the crowd. If
I can't get a hook into his mind, that's it; right now, my safety is
more important than getting revenge, and I'm sure I'll see him around.
This new adrenalin rush has cut through the grey, sick feeling just
enough to let me look for Ferd a while longer.

If I can get a hook into his mind, I erase myself from his
perceptions when I can do so without raising his suspicion, and follow
him at a distance. After ten or fifteen minutes--long enough that it's
not obvious that it has anything to do with me--his world starts
tipping and swaying.

When he gets seasick, I give his world a last few shudders, then
hurry off to look for Ferd.

"Well, since you said 'please,'" he says, and sets you down. You wobble a
bit, but not much. Then you shoot him a nasty look and try to slip into
the crowd. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite let go of your arm, and firms up
his grip the instant you try to slip away.

"You're not all that you seem, are you?" he says. Your eyes briefly betray
your surprise, then harden again as you clamp down on the reaction. Damn,
how did he...?

You notice that his nostrils flared slightly as he spoke, and that he
clearly sniffs the air around himself quite thoroughly. He must have a
sense of smell on a par with yours, you realize. To you, he smells like a
goat. To him, you must smell like a fox.

As you mentally fumble for the appropriate response, you slip yourself into
his head like a warm bath. He’s strong-willed, but nothing compared to
you.

"Oh, God, it's another psychotic stalker," I say. I reach into my
bag with my free hand and pull out a pad and a pen, then say, "Arm,
please." If he doesn't let go at once, I tuck the pad under my arm and
press three sensitive points in his wrist with my free hand, causing
bolts of pain to shoot up his arm into his shoulder. (No, really, they
do.) With both hands now free, I write "8312" on a slip of paper, tear
it out, and hand it to him. "Here's your number. Please be patient,
I'll get to you as soon as I can."

Then I walk away. If he tries to grab me, I do the bolts-of-pain
thing again. I vanish into the crowd and erase myself (fox-musk and
all) from his perceptions, then go off in search of Ferd.

A gust of wind blows my own smell back into my face, and I gag.
Roast classmate. Couldn't he smell that?

No point in making him seasick right away; I don't want him to get
too many clues about me at once. I doubt he's really a psycho, *or* a
stalker, but who knows what he'll do with what he learns?

"Oh, God, it's another psychotic stalker," you say. You reach into your
bag with your free hand and pull out a pad and a pen.

"Arm, please."

Looking a bit stunned, he lets go -- it seems to him that you’re not going
to be running anywhere. He glances over your head (you’re a good two feet
shorter than him) as though looking for someone. Ferd, perhaps? You
scribble on a slip of paper, tear it out, and hand it to him.

"Here's your number," you say. "Please be patient, I'll get to you as soon
as I can."

He glances down at the paper, on which you’ve written "8312," and, at the
bottom, "Now Serving: 3."

You shake your arm hard to lose his grip. He’s STRONG, but stunned. Your
arm slips free before he can tighten up again.

"Hey, wait," he says, reaching for you again. "I’m chasing the guy with
the nosering too!"

He grabs your shoulder before you can get outside his considerable reach.
Goat-boy has LONG arms. You spin around and jab three fingers into his
forearm. They barely make contact, but waves of pain shoot up his arm like
you just rammed hot knitting needles into him. He jerks his arm back, and
you run away. As soon as you’ve gotten out of his direct line of sight --
being small helps when diving into crowds -- you turn yourself invisible to
him. A strong breeze gives you all the rationale you need for erasing your
scent without arousing his suspicion. What else of his you’ve aroused,
gods only know... he’s a satyr, after all.

You look through the crowd and see that Ferd is gone.

Crap. That boy is like an eel. What kind of a stalking is this,
anyway? Since when did the stalkee have to do all the work?

Ugh. Still a little sick. No running. Following the satyr would
be easier on my stomach. Hey, what was that he said before he tried to
grab me?

Oh, no.

I pull my coat shut against the wind and watch the satyr for a
little while, to figure out what he's about. Is he really not drunk?
Does he maul people as a matter of course? Is there anything I can
learn before I go up against him again? I'm skittish now; lack of
knowledge is what's sinking me with Ferd, and I'm determined not to
foul up like that again.

And I have to decide how to act. This fellow is a potential ally,
or maybe a decoy; he knows about me, but perhaps not much. So I should
be friendly. Right? ...or maybe not. Should I scare him? Terrify him
so much that he gets his sharp nose and his grabby hands and his hairy,
drunken butt out of my life? Out of the blast radius, too. That's a
thought. Or maybe I should flirt with him, get him to throw himself in
the path of danger. That might take care of Ferd and him in one swoop.

Maybe I can bluff my way through this if I just act normal.

Normal. The way I acted with him--was that normal? Well, yes. I
didn't embed his teeth in his brainpan, I didn't give him a lifetime
trip to Flip City. Maybe the number and the order to wait in line was
a little Pythonesque. Okay, and any normal woman would have screamed
and wiggled when he grabbed her.

Crap. I think I'm too used to playing with Ferd's mind to remember
what's "normal." Is two days all it takes for me to lose my balance?

I'm so tired of acting.

Normal it is. Not for tactical purposes, but because if I have to
be psychotic with one more person, I'm going to completely lose my
moorings. But I think that--just so I won't get the bends--I'll try
normal with a difference.

When I've picked up a few things about the satyr, I zip into a
store or doorway well in front of him. As he draws near, I step out of
the door, lean against the wall with crossed arms, and say, "If you
want to move yourself up in the queue by bumping off the competition, I
won't stop you. What do you need to know about him?"

If he tries to touch me, I poke him again, picking a different set
of pressure points this time. The first zap doesn't work, and I look a
little annoyed before poking him again. ZOT! Ah, got it. (If I can
make him think Acupressure of Doom is a real physical technique, with
all of the drawbacks of real acupressure--like not quite getting the
right spot the first time around--I can dodge the worst of the "How'd
you do that?" questions.)

Goat boy nearly jumps out of his skin when you pop out in front of him.
Maybe he relies on his sense of smell TOO much, if it can surprise him that
badly to have someone just step in front of him unexpectedly. When you
tell him he can whack Ferd for you, his face brightens a bit.

Quickly getting over the shock, he proceeds to grill you right there on the
street.

"Who IS that guy?"

"What the hell is with those Happy Balls?"

"Why do they cause some people to blow up, but not others?"

Hold the phone...

’Happy Balls?’ Those marbles, maybe...? THEY cause
people to explode?

Suddenly, you feel a bit silly for having stuffed one into your pocket.

"Who IS that guy?"

"John McEnnis," I say. "An art major at NYU."

"What the hell is with those Happy Balls? Why do they cause some
people to blow up, but not others?"

Happy balls? Blow up? My sly smile fades as this new information
sinks in. Happy balls. Make people blow up. On Ferd's command?
Happy balls. Magic foci. Or magic storage. Artifacts? Or
easily-created things? I get a sudden image of Ferd in his pyjamas,
sipping his morning coffee as he sits on his nest and lays marbles.

I bite down on a gasp of hysterical laughter before it escapes.
It's no good breaking up now.

"Tell me everything you know about the happy balls," I say, and the
urgency in my voice startles me. Damn, I'm trying to play this cool.

"They make some people happy," Billy says. "And make other people
explode. Your boyfriend dropped a whole bunch of them when he decided
to slam-dance with a truck. What do YOU know?"

I'll ignore the comment about my boyfriend for the moment.

I carefully say, "I don't know anything about the *how*, but I
might know a little about the *why*. Why don't we not discuss this in
the middle of a crowded street?" I start walking away, looking over my
shoulder to signal him to follow me. "Do you know someplace where we
can talk?"

When he's following me (or leading me), I add, "And while we're
walking, maybe we can talk about more neutral things... like who you
are, and why you're following McEnnis, and perhaps, as a courtesy, why
you thought it would be a good idea to grab me and squeeze while I was
sick."

If he asks who I am, I say, "Robin. I'm in one of McEnnis's art
history classes." If he asks why I'm following McEnnis, I say,
"Later."

This ball in my pocket--damn. I can't drop it and let yet another
fool pick it up. It's bad enough that half of [insert borough here] is
now collecting them like pogs. I can't keep it, since Ferd might make
it go off accidentally. Or on purpose. After all, if Ferd's the
source of the happy balls, then according to Billy here, he wasn't just
making people go boom and bwahaha, he was--

--wait--

Ferd was making people happy?